At least a dozen people were wounded after a grenade was thrown into a packed bar by a man brandishing a Kalashnikov rifle in the French Alpine city of Grenoble. Two of the victims were said to be “critical” - one with chest injuries - following the explosion at around 8pm on Wednesday. All the windows of Aksehir - a bar in the Olympic Village district of Grenoble - were blown out, in what appeared to be a planned attack.
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“It happened on the Claude Kogan square, late on Wednesday night,” said local council official Chloé Pantel. Speaking from the scene, she said: “It was a criminal act, most likely a grenade.”. François Touret de Coucy, the deputy prosecutor of Grenoble, confirmed the theory, saying that it was “a grenade thrown by someone that caused the explosion”. The bar is in a socially deprived area frequented by numerous drug gangs, and a man was seen brandishing a Kalashnikov rifle that was not fired, he said.
Mr Touret de Coucy said no theory for the attack had yet been ruled out, although terrorism was not being prioritised. He did not identify any of the victims. The bar - which is named after a town in the Konya Province of Turkey - was surrounded by police and firefighters by the early hours of Thursday morning, when no arrests had yet been made. Nearby streets were being sealed off, and locals advised to stay indoors.
All the injured were taken to the Grenoble Alpes University Hospital. Eric Piolle, the Mayor of Grenoble, condemned “with the greatest firmness a criminal act of unprecedented violence”, and thanked “the emergency and security forces for their rapid intervention”. It came at a time when thousands of British tourists are in the Grenoble area, on skiing and snowboarding holidays. Grenoble's Olympic Village was built for the 1968 Winter Games.
Kalashnikovs are often used by gangs in France, especially in drugs-related crime. In November, Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said they were being used in numerous towns and cities around France. “We are at a tipping point and the choice we have today is a choice between general mobilisation or the Mexicanisation of the country,” he said. The drugs trade in France has long centred on major cities such as Marseille, where at least 17 drug-related killings were reported last year.
But the problem is increasingly moving out to other places, including to areas normally associated with tourism. Kalashnikovs were also used during a horrifying series of bomb, gun and knife attacks carried out by Islamic State and al-Qaeda operatives from 2015. The deadliest single terrorist attack ever in the country came in November 2015 when 130 people were killed during one night in Paris. Suicide bombers pledging allegiance to ISIS targeted the Stade de France, cafés, restaurants and the Bataclan music venue, where 90 died.
